


Unsaid

by a_sparrows_fall



Series: Thoughtbound [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon - Book, Canon Dialogue, Geralt / Fringilla Vigo (in passing), Geralt / Triss (in passing), Geralt / Yennefer (in passing), Greek Mythology - Freeform, M/M, Regis / Succubus (in passing), Romantic Soulmates, Soulmates, Telepathic Bond, Telepathy, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 14:48:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12937557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sparrows_fall/pseuds/a_sparrows_fall
Summary: And then he hears it. A voice in his head. Definitely not his own.A man’s voice: soft, scared, and just a little bit posh.Oh, dear,it says.A soulmate AU, where soulmates form a telepathic bond. Based heavily on the novels.





	Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> This is closely tied to the Witcher novels. There are several instances of canonical dialogue quoted throughout.
> 
> Far be it from me to discourage you from reading my work, but just a warning: if you have not read the novels, this will almost certainly spoil parts of them for you.
> 
> THANK YOU times fifty-thousand to [Kaeltale](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeltale/pseuds/kaeltale) and [Dordean](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dordean) for the thorough, helpful, amazing beta. You helped improve this story so much!

_Thoughtbond_ : a colloquial term for a very specific form of telepathic link that spontaneously occurs after initial contact with a compatible partner. The individual with which one shares this connection is referred to as one’s _thoughtbound_.

Unlike most well-documented forms of magic, the origins of the thoughtbond remain something of a mystery, despite years of academic study of both the lifestyles and physiology of the affected. No prior experience with the arcane is required for the bond's use, and no specific criteria of race, gender, age, intelligence, or station have been identified that make one more or less predisposed to having a bond. Interspecies bonds, while rare, have been known to occur. Indeed, in some alternate versions of the legend, Lara Dorren and Cregennan of Lod shared a bond, though no contemporary accounts seem to corroborate this idea.

Popular lore holds that those who are thoughtbound are destined to form a romantic attachment; the informal term ‘soulmate’ is interchangeably used in many stories and songs. This phrase, however, is spurned by magical scholars for its vague and sentimental characterization of the occurrence.

_Kortevar & Loevstagg, A Common Lexicon of the Arcane, Twelfth Edition_

* * *

He hears it in his head—her _voice_ , this Yennefer of Vengerberg—and he knows it’s _her_. It has to be. 

He’s bonded to her. It’s only her, now, for the rest of his life, and he’s never been so happy.

In the midst of the fight, her magic shielding them both from the fury of a crazed djinn, he’s tempted by a mad thought: to use the last wish to bind them together another way, to keep her safe by tying her fate to his own. But he doesn’t know how the two forms of magic would react, if it could cause them harm.

Destiny turned him into a witcher, made him a killer, put him on the Path.

This bond might be the first good thing destiny has given him; he can’t bear the thought of fucking it up.

He uses an old witcher’s trick that Vesemir taught him instead, adding a sort of riddle to his wish, banishing the djinn to an ethereal state for a thousand years and saving Yen’s life in the process.

The decimated remains of a tavern in Rinde is not where he expected to find his fate, to start this new part of his life, but it’s as good a place as any, he supposes.

“I’d advise sticking an aspen stake into that Yennefer before burying her,” they hear the priest grumble, just beyond the heaps of ruined timber surrounding them.

“Silver’s actually more reliable,” he tells her, releasing her nipple from his mouth. “On lower vampires.”

 _Less shop talk, Geralt,_ she tells him in his head. _Say my name again, and then return your tongue to more useful service._

“ _Yen_ ,” he says, following her orders to the letter.

He wonders when she’ll be able to hear him in _her_ mind.

There'll be time. It doesn’t matter right now.

He’s so damned lucky.

* * *

A month later, they’re in some shit town a half day’s ride from Lower Sodden, and she runs into an old colleague.

He sees her blinking and cocking her head slightly to the side, listening to the man and answering, all without saying a word.

What they have… It’s not a bond. It’s just sorcery. Has been, this whole time.

“You’re not—” he says that night in their bed, facing away from her.

“No,” she says, not turning.

“Right,” he says, trying to sound like the emotionless killing machine everyone believes him to be.

He feels his heart break softly like a pane of glass, a crack spidering out from its center. It hangs together by the sheer force of his will.

If she was his, he thinks maybe she’d feel it, too.

But she’s not.

He leaves before she awakens the next morning.

* * *

They circle one another for years after that, trading glancing blows and then nursing each other’s wounds, and nothing changes.

Bond or no, he still feels tied to her somehow, and when she’s near, he still hears her in his head—if she’ll condescend to speak to him, anyway.

Some days, he can convince himself it’s fine.

He’s a manufactured killer of monsters, so it seems only right that if he had a bond, it would be fabricated as well.

* * *

He finds Ciri, again and again and again; it’s clear she’s meant for him in a way he never could have expected.

He wonders if bonds are always romantic. Maybe they could be more… familial. He thinks that’d suit him better, anyway.

But as close as she is to him in his heart, she never appears in his mind.

When she shifts into a trance and begins speaking prophecy in a voice not of this world, he begins to realize that she might be his destiny, but he’s just one small part of hers.

* * *

The coup on Thanedd has far-reaching and long-lasting repercussions, true. Both Yen and Ciri are in the wind. Geralt’s not sure he ever wants to see the former again, if her political position is what he thinks it is, and he’s desperately seeking the latter.

But ultimately the revolt is not the event that tears down and rebuilds his entire world.

As a witcher, he spends a fair amount of time in graveyards. He thinks nothing at all of leading his band of friends into this particular one, scoffing at their concerns about ghouls and other necrophages.

The moment creeps up on him. He’s not even the first one to notice the smell.

“Wormwood,” Percival Schuttenbach tilts his head up, sniffing the air. “Basil, sage, aniseed… Cinnamon? What the blazes?”

There’s a spectre of movement beneath the ancient dolmen standing in the center of the rows of graves. Geralt lets his head dip down, and through a crack in the massive blocks of the weathered monolith, he locks his gaze onto shiny black eyes, set in a face he can’t even see yet.

And then he hears it. A voice in his head. Definitely not his own.

A man’s voice: soft, scared, and just a little bit posh. 

_**Oh, dear** ,_ it says.

 _What the fuck_, Geralt thinks without thinking, and then stops himself abruptly.

Somehow he knows the voice’s owner can hear him, too.

“Out with ya, or we’ll poke holes in you, you wee ghoulie!” Zoltan threatens, advancing on the stone structure, sihil raised.

Geralt shakes his head at the dwarf, but finds he can’t make a sound. He’s silent, frozen to the spot.

He feels like his medallion should shake, or lightning should strike.

A building fell on top of him during the incident with Yen and the djinn, and he nearly died before finding Ciri at the home of Yurga the merchant.

He feels like something should have warned him.

But there’s no prelude to it at all.

The only thing that happens is: a slim middle-aged man with greying hair loose to his shoulders emerges from the stones. Clad in simple black robes, he clutches the strap of a cloth satchel fixed across his chest, looking every bit as shaken as Geralt.

This can’t be happening.

“There now, you’re perfectly safe,” Geralt hears Zoltan say, attempting something like comfort.

The man—his _thoughtbound,_ Geralt thinks, his stomach doing a somersault—takes one more look at Geralt…

...then turns to Zoltan and introduces himself to the group, suddenly smiling, implacably calm, as though nothing had passed between them.

Geralt’s mind goes so eerily quiet that he practically misses the man’s name when he tells it to them aloud.

(Something Regis… something something.)

An instinct stirs in him, makes him want to reach out across the bond to ask again, but that would make this _real_ and _permanent_ and _his_ ; he’s not sure he can handle that.

This has all gone terribly wrong.

* * *

Emiel Regis, the barber surgeon from Dillingen with the long name no one can remember, joins their group. In addition to being an accomplished distiller, he’s learned in a number of subjects, has a broad knowledge of the arts and sciences, and speaks several languages, including a couple Geralt doesn’t recognize. There are days Geralt suspects Regis talks more than the rest of them combined.

But he hasn’t said another word to Geralt in his head.

Geralt’s half-tempted to believe it was a fluke, that the purported medical man is really a mage, and the voice he heard was just another spell of some sort.

That has to be wishful thinking, though: the connection between them, however fleeting, wasn’t at all like Yen’s charm. It wasn’t just words in his head, like a xenovox installed in his brain.

No, he’d _felt_ Regis’s shock and fear before the thought had disappeared altogether.

Catching glances at him as they ride, or studying his face by firelight, Geralt wonders if the genteel doctor can feel the inner workings of his mind, too, or if the link between them is completely deadened.

Milva and Zoltan would almost certainly think him mad. Dandelion would either laugh himself silly at Geralt’s admission, or write a song about it before a fortnight had passed, or both. So he keeps it to himself.

What baffles him most of all—even makes him begin to doubt his own memory of the event—is that nothing in Regis’s manner betrays that he has any idea what Geralt is thinking. He’s as pleasant with the witcher as he is with the rest of their party—in fact, Geralt has grown rather fond of the chatty gentleman’s company.

He knows himself to be an exceptionally poor liar; his witcher mutations are probably the cause of that.

But how could Regis—how could anyone, for that matter—possibly keep such a remarkable secret to themselves?

If it was all a misunderstanding—if their bond was somehow broken, or hadn’t really existed in the first place—Geralt should be happy, shouldn’t he?

What could he and this man possibly have in common?

The dark-eyed barber surgeon throws him a smile through the shimmering ribbons of heat hovering just above the fire, pausing in the midst of weaving a story that has Milva snorting, Zoltan howling, and Dandelion himself looking impressed at the telling of it.

Geralt tries to smile back.

He should be happy.

* * *

When Regis holds the blazing horseshoe aloft, proclaiming the innocence of the poor dimwitted girl, Geralt can’t help it.

 _Who are you?_ he asks finally, sending the thought to Regis, clear and resonant with unchecked curiosity.

Regis looks squarely at him—message received, apparently—and Geralt takes a deep breath.

Which is the moment all hell breaks loose.

Geralt takes a stallion’s hoof to the head, and everything goes dark.

* * *

The words in his mind pull him out of his meditative state: they’re light and sharply enunciated, mirroring the urgency that floods his senses.

**_Geralt, it’s me._ **

He tries to sit up, twisting against against the ground, but doesn’t quite succeed in making it fully upright; he feels the jerk of the ties on his wrists as he reaches the limits of his movement.

_Regis?_

The chain around his neck goes unexpectedly taut, pulled by the shaking of his medallion. The scent of herbs finds him, then, and he looks up just in time to see the barber-surgeon appear beside him, absent of any noise from a creaking door or the sound of someone scurrying through window of the garrison shed where they’re being held.

He hadn’t fully realized it, having been somewhat occupied by contemplating his impending death and trying with all his might to ignore Dandelion, but it suddenly occurs to him how bright it is in the shed—not enough for a normal human to see, but the full moon illuminates the room with surprising clarity.

Regis crouches next to him and begins to remove his restraints with swift precision, apparently also unhampered by the lack of light.

Geralt stares at the ground where the surgeon kneels beside him, since he can hardly look away, and in the forced stillness, he takes in Regis’s shape, bathed in the blue-white wash of the moon. He feels contemplative for half a moment, admiring the man’s profile, like this is how he was made to be seen, and—

Then Geralt sees it—or more accurately, _doesn’t_ see it—

—where’s Regis’s shadow?

Oh, gods. The trial by ordeal. The herbs. The moon.

It’s worse than he thought. _So_ much worse.

He must have sent that feeling out across the bond, because he feels a twinge of something like shame sent back in return.

_**I’m sorry, Geralt. I truly am.** _

Dandelion witters on moronically about the guards as Regis releases him. Geralt is so incensed he can barely see straight.

_You’re a—_

_**Yes. Now you see why I didn’t—**_ Regis breaks off. He tries again. **_I didn’t want to—_**

“What about you?” Dandelion asks Regis, and Geralt wants to smack him. Smack _both_ of them.

Assuring Dandelion he shouldn’t worry, Regis explains where they should go to meet up with Milva.

Blood rushes back to his stiff limbs, and Geralt turns as he stands, rubbing the chafed skin of his wrists and pacing away from them both before he does something rash.

Regis says something to them aloud—a farewell, maybe. But Geralt doesn’t hear it, the casual tone of it clattering ineffectually against his ear.

His mind, though, is lit up with words punctured with regret:

_**Please understand, I never meant—** _

“It would be best if we never met again,” Geralt tells him, baring his teeth as he articulates, a threat he knows Regis will understand. “Am I making myself clear?”

He lets his anger slam into the vampire, then, like the wild swing of a warhammer, brutal and imprecise, as much a defensive move as an offensive one.

Regis recoils half a step, but his gaze never falters.

“Absolutely,” he says to Geralt with a horrible smile.

Yeah, he can feel it all right.

 _Good_.

* * *

He has the entirety of Regis’s name down solidly now; he’s not likely to forget it anytime soon.

“Right, that’s done,” Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff Godefroy says, turning away from the recently mended Dandelion.

Geralt is vaguely aware of his hand trembling, godsdammit, but he doesn’t put the sword down, just inches the tip of the blade closer to Regis’s throat, and pushes the words out to him—he knows Regis can hear him, for one reason or another.

_Tell me this—what we’re doing now—tell me this is some vampire thing. Tell me it’s not what I think it is._

“Move away,” Geralt snarls at Milva, but he only has eyes for Regis.

Regis glares back at him.

_**Vampires can read minds, but that is not what you and I are experiencing. Trust me in this.** _

Geralt laughs both aloud and in his head, because for _fuck’s_ sake: trust is a little more than he can manage right now.

“Go on,” Regis says. “Thrust it in.”

Geralt has half a mind to do it, too—when some rogue part of his brain, some bit of him tied up in their ridiculous, abhorrent bond lets his imagination slide into a new direction, urging him to consider an entirely _different_ type of thrust.

 _Shit_. He doesn’t want this. How could he possibly—

He growls in frustration.

_We’re—you and I are—_

He can’t even finish the thought, let alone say it aloud.

 _—and you didn’t even_ _tell_ _me what you_ _are._

_**What did you expect? Geralt. This is madness. We can’t—this can’t continue.** _

He should agree with Regis there. He bloody well _wants_ to.

But everyone is shouting, arguing with him—it’s damn distracting, and _none_ of this should even be possible.

“You don’t know what he is,” Geralt tells the others, and they have _no_ idea how much he means it.

He lets Regis leave, in the end: watches the delicate lines of his form coiling into vapor before drifting away completely.

He expects to feel unburdened, relieved. He doesn’t.

Dandelion, Milva, and even the fucking Nilfgaardian are looking at him like he’s lost his mind.

Bloody hell.

Everyone’s trying to kill him because of his ward, a surprise child with powers granted to her by the Elder Blood, and now his thoughtbound is a fucking _vampire_ who smells like a village witch’s kitchen and looks like a godsdamned tax collector.

Destiny, thinks Geralt, is an absolute bitch.

* * *

They keep moving.

The camaraderie the group had shared is stifled now, their conversations seeming to wane along with the moon; he tries not to see the deepening gouge in it as a reflection of his state of being, a clear implication that he is lacking something he didn’t know he needed.

Clouds drift past, hiding its craterous surface for long moments, and he tells himself that they are just clouds, not mist, and any movement in the forest is caused by some errant beast, and not a familiar individual lurking just out of sight.

* * *

He turns over on his bedroll and looks into the forest, letting his eyes track to the place where even his enhanced vision loses the light, trees disappearing into nothingness.

 _It could be worse_ , he thinks, the words drifting from him just before sleep takes him. _It could have been the Nilfgaardian. At least you finally admitted who you are._

He feels a laugh in response.

* * *

The vampire comes back to him in words, neat phrases encroaching at the edge of his thoughts before the man himself appears in the flesh. Which, Geralt supposes, is fitting.

He’s leaning against a boulder, sitting up on the second shift of that night’s watch, when Regis’s voice lights up the back of his brain.

_**Tell me about her. Ciri.** _

He looks about once, and, discovering nothing, gives up searching.

**__** _She’s... What do you want to know? She’s a young girl. The princess of Cintra, and the heir to a power no one really understands. The gem every kingdom on the continent wants to set in their crown._

_**Mmmm. An elegant and helpful framing, but it lacks the portrait within.** _

Geralt hesitates. He hasn’t spoken of Ciri much since Thanedd.

He’s thought of a hundred different ways he could have been more aware of the tension in the air, gotten to Ciri sooner, avoided being so utterly shattered by that son of a bitch Vilgefortz.

He’s rescued her a thousand times, night after night, to the point that all other happier reminiscences have been pushed from his head.

He couldn’t find a way to bring her up to the others. 

But in the night’s stillness, with only crickets’ song piercing the air, the idea seems more tenable. He’s tempted to release his grip on his guilt, more than a little weary for having carried it so long.

And the fact that he doesn’t have to say any of it aloud… That might help, too.

So he tells Regis of their time at Kaer Morhen, goes on in probably too much detail at the way she’d punch the air and stomp her feet after every failed gauntlet run, and her squeals of delight when she finally bested it.

Tells him how, after he told her the story of cat and the tree as they were leaving Brokilon, she’d use every spare second to try and pry more tales from him. Exasperated, Geralt said he wasn’t a bard, just a witcher, and only had stories about killing monsters. “Tell _those_ , then!” she’d demanded, and when he did, she seemed equally thrilled by those gory narratives, if not moreso.

He can’t say much about her stay at Melitele’s temple, or her training with Yennefer, of course, but he suspects Regis can tell how much he missed her by the listing, sloping sound of his phrases when he describes that time.

And when he runs out of words altogether, he tries to send Regis images and feelings instead: the sound of her voice, the flash of her laughing green eyes, and the steadying grip of her hands on his head when she’d ride on his shoulders.

 _She’s…_ _She’s my destiny_. _More than that._

_**And yet… you tried to run from her. On several occasions.** _

Geralt chuckles.

_I don’t like being told what to do._

_**We’re not so very different in that respect. I rather eschew tradition myself.** _

Instinctively Geralt looks up, trying to find eyes to meet, a face to search, someone’s intentions to discern. He spies only greenery swaying in a gentle breeze and a wren flapping by, soaring up toward the forest canopy.

_What are you trying to—? Regis. What is this, to you? You’re the one that said we shouldn’t—_

He sighs. It has to be said—thought—at some point.

_I don’t even—I don’t like men._

There’s a gameness to Regis’s thought-reply; he sidesteps the issue altogether.

_**Am I a ‘man’? Most would say no—** _

Rolling his eyes, Geralt makes a show of his irritation for exactly no one.

_—don’t get pedantic—you know what I mean—_

_**—and for that matter, do you think I’m thrilled that you’re a human?** _

He sits up straighter, back scraping against the rock.

 _What the hell is that supposed to—? One, I’m a witcher, which is something either less or more than human, depending on who you ask._ _And two, I thought you had fucked back off to Dillingen, or wherever it is you actually come from._

He hopes Regis can feel his aggravation, wherever he is. Geralt is willing to bet his next several contracts’ take that the vampire isn’t far away.

 _ **All in good time,**_ Regis explains mildly. **_For now, Dandelion needs looking after._**

Ha. He _thought_ so.

_Dandelion. Of course._

_**Flattering yourself, witcher? I’ll be off soon enough.** _

_I’ll believe it when I stop hearing your godsdamned grating voice in my head._

_**You’ll miss it sooner than you think.** _

**__** _Now who’s flattering himself?_

**_Goodnight, Geralt._ **

_Goodnight, Emiel Regis whatever-it-was._

* * *

As it turns out, neither of them had been particularly honest.

Regis _does_ return to fix up Dandelion, but makes no move to leave afterward, and in fact, simply settles in to help the rest of the group prepare a fish soup.

And Geralt, for his part, has been missing the aggravating blood sucker after all—at least, until he begins throwing unflattering remarks in Geralt’s direction.

All of them steadfastly ignore the witcher’s stated intention to continue on without them, talking amongst themselves as they eat.

Milva mocks Geralt’s lone wolf approach, skewering the very idea of a lone wolf itself. Wolves succeed only in packs, she protests.

“But he—” she chucks a thumb at Geralt, “doesn’t understand that.”

“Oh, he does,” Regis smiles, hiding his fangs out of habit. “He does.”

Geralt sends some particular four letter words across the bond, even as he says a few more out loud, voicing to everyone what exactly he thinks of their bizarre little crew.

As they bed down for the night, Geralt catches Regis’s eye from across the campsite, the vampire having elected to take the first watch of the evening.

_So, you’re staying then?_

_**Yes,**_ Regis thinks at him, unexpectedly brief.

 _Fine with me,_ Geralt punches back, rolling to his side, turning away from Regis pointedly.

And he finds to his surprise that it truly is.

* * *

Their travel formation is always much the same: Cahir and Milva tend to bring up the rear, while Dandelion, seeking the utmost safety, takes the middle.

And up front, one can always find the two chestnut colored horses of the group paired together, Roach sidled up to Regis’s slightly more stolid Nilfgaardian bay; she appears calmer in the stallion’s presence. 

Regis stares at the road before them, appearing not to acknowledge Geralt as he takes his place at the head of the caravan that morning.

**_It’s touching, your sacrifice: riding up here, all for the sake of that mare of yours._ **

_I wouldn’t say... sacrifice, exactly._

Regis smirks, but doesn’t press, aloud or otherwise.

Their silent conversation is little more than idle chatter to start—asking the other where they’ve been, the places they’ve loved and hated, and a lot of questions about their respective species.

Eventually Geralt asks Regis how he knows the druids of Caed Dhu, and Regis tells him the story in its entirety, even if Geralt grumbles at points about the length of it.

Lured on by the increasingly hazy-edged liminal space between them, Geralt explains that his mother was a druid as well as a sorceress: the only one he’s ever known to have a child.

He’s not sure he’s ever told anyone about his meeting with Visenna before.

_I suppose that makes me... unusual. Unique._

_**You’ll forgive my saying so,**_ the vampire tells him with a thought-smile, _**but I was hoping you’d tell me something I hadn’t surmised for myself.**_

The sound of someone calling Regis’s name tugs at them, then, drawing them back to reality.

“I’m sorry?”

“I _said_ ,” Dandelion repeats, “You’re awfully quiet, Regis.”

“Yeah,” Milva agrees. “You’ve been silent for hours. We usually can’t _stop_ you from talking.”

The vampire purses his lips, looking meditative.

“Am I? Mmmm. I hadn’t noticed, actually.”

* * *

_You don’t have to do this._

Geralt drags his knife’s edge down the length of wood again, keeping his eyes fixed on his idle carving.

Ever since Dandelion’s hamfisted comments about blood, a cloud of apprehension has descended on their little party, both Milva and the bard having gone noticeably more quiet. Even Cahir, who seems inclined toward the taciturn anyway, has been talking less.

Inversely, the inner workings of Regis’s mind have grown more agitated; Geralt can see with some clarity where this is headed.

_**I do, in fact. The fear only runs rampant if left unchecked. As the saying goes: dearme aep synvyr creu d’yaeblen. The sleep of reason produces monsters.** _

Even after that bit of reassurance, when Regis addresses all of them out loud, Geralt tries to stop him two more times.

The vampire throws him a curious expression, followed by a glimmer of surprise and gratitude.

 _ **That’s kind of you, Geralt,**_ he smiles weakly, _**but you’ll likely want to hear this, too.**_

Regis tells them about his past: goes into embarrassing detail about his shyness, his craving for the approval of his peers, his inevitable descent into addiction.

While he pauses here and there to reflect, it's clear this is a practiced narrative, something Regis has considered at length and has reconciled himself to telling: a penance he is prepared to pay as much as needed.

But inside Regis’s head, the memory is raw as a wound and chasm-deep. Underneath the eloquent explanations about vampire culture and little self-deprecating remarks about his own wordiness, there’s a vulnerability the witcher hadn’t glimpsed before, a stark contrast to the cold tone of the textbook passages he’d memorized in his formative years at Kaer Morhen.

Geralt isn’t entirely sure what he expected to find in Regis’s thoughts of his past. But he certainly didn’t expect the hurt, the familiar weariness born of facing one’s own daily struggles, the lingering self-doubt.

It’s hard to think of another word for it: Regis is so very... _human_.

They all sit up by the fire for some after the discussion, none of them eager to drift off to sleep. Regis stares into the flames, his emotions having regained some of their former tranquility.

Geralt takes a seat beside him.

_Do you know what I’m called north of the Pontar?_

Regis doesn’t turn to look at him, wishing to keep their exchange private from the others, but subtly raises questioning eyebrows, encouraging him to continue.

_The Butcher of Blaviken. And not without reason._

_**I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s not exactly the same.** _

_All I’m saying is… I’ve done things I’d rather not have, and been looked on in fear afterward, too._

Regis is pensive, withdrawing his hands from the warmth of the fire before pulling his cloak more tightly about his shoulders.

 _ **It is… tiring,**_ he offers thinly, _**to know you are only tolerated**_ _**because you are needed.**_

And even in their minds, the end of that sentence is left unsaid, implied by its absence: _not because you are wanted._

He catches a stray strand of wistfulness from the vampire: a dream of a life where he is not constantly proving both his worth and his benignity to humanity. One where he might be desired for the entirety of his nature, and not the limited caricature of himself he presents to a world who fears him.

 _You are wanted, _Geralt thinks, his own candor taking him a little by surprise. _And needed_ , he tacks on quickly. _We’d be lost without you, clearly. We’d be short a bard, to start with_.

The witcher pauses, pulling a mock frown. _Actually, come to think of it…_

 _ **Geralt**_ , Regis chides him, the bond shaking with laughter.

_You were right, you know. About what you said before. That we’re not so very different._

_**Is that,**_ Regis thinks teasingly, _ **your professional opinion?**_

_More a personal one, let’s say._

* * *

An arrow hits Regis directly in the chest during the battle on the Yaruga.

In between sword strikes, Geralt watches as it burrows into the vampire’s heart with nauseating accuracy.

The shout is ripped from him, and yet he can barely hear it as Milva screams and shoots, becoming rage incarnate, laying a handful of Nilfgaardians low in as many seconds.

He doesn’t even have time to consider that their bond doesn’t feel broken, let alone move to Regis’s side, before a familiar voice sings out in his head.

 _ **Not rid of me that easily**_ , Regis taunts him just before he sits back up.

All the tension in Geralt’s body threatens to slip away from him, like the whole of him is exhaling in relief. He has to force himself to focus on the battle at hand, switching from pole to sword and back again, the conditions repeatedly reversing faster than a hurricane.

He thinks they’ve made it, having cleared safe passage for Milva and Dandelion, when he sees the blood on Milva’s thighs, her movement gone terrifyingly slow.

Not everyone is as fortunate as he is to escape a loss today.

* * *

After it’s over and he’s released from his unexpected royal audience, Geralt follows the gentle pull in his gut that leads him to the nearest forest outcropping just south of the portside town.

Regis stands alone, leaning his shoulder against the trunk of an enormous fir tree.

_How are you holding up?_

The feeling he gets back is both weighty and precarious, like an ancient tower with crumbling foundations: still standing—for now.

_**And you?** _

Geralt places a hand on his swollen back.

_The field surgeon said I was—_

**— _that’s not what I meant. Though I’m sure he’s entirely correct. I can examine you myself, if you’d like._**

Maybe under different circumstances, Geralt would have teasingly seized on the innuendo. But the weariness in vampire’s thought is correspondent to what he feels himself, so he simply sighs and asks the thing he’s been dreading asking.

_How is she?_

Again, Regis doesn’t bother pushing a worded thought out to Geralt. He just shakes his head, and Geralt is overcome with a wave of empathetic grief.

They say nothing, both of them mired in feelings: hurt, sorrow, exhaustion. Regis stares into the sky, while Geralt focuses on the carpet of dead leaves and moss beneath his feet.

The bond feels, for the first time, like a blessing instead of an obligation, because when Regis finally looks back at him, casting a worn smile in his direction, Geralt feels a spike of warmth in his chest radiating from the vampire, and it’s clear that Regis isn’t being glib or insensitive. It isn’t an attempt to paper over their remorse, but merely to pull them up from it momentarily, to cast it in a different light. It’s a reprieve, not a retreat.

_**Did I hear the chatter in town correctly? You’ve been knighted?** _

Geralt groans aloud, and sends Regis the briefest recap, including a picture of Meve’s hilariously lisping mouth, painted red as the lozenges on the Rivian insignia. He still can’t quite believe she had the audacity to _wink_ at him.

 _ **So,**_ Regis chuckles, pushing off the tree and moving to him, _ **Sir Geralt of Rivia, then.**_

Geralt looks up to answer, but his eye catches on something: a tiny hole in Regis’s tunic, just over his heart. A speck of skin, smaller than an oren, peers out at him.

He stares down at it, mesmerized, before gingerly placing his finger over it.

All the humor of the moment dies. Mixed terror and relief rush back to him, threatening to swallow him—swallow both of them—whole.

Regis doesn’t look up at Geralt’s face, but clasps his hands around Geralt’s outstretched one soothingly.

_**It’s nothing, I told you—** _

Geralt grabs him roughly by the shoulders.

_Gods, shut up. Just shut up._

Regis almost stumbles as Geralt shoves him back up against the tree, smashing his mouth against Regis’s.

Then Regis’s hands are on either side of Geralt’s face as he kisses back with abandon.

Regis’s lips are soft and sweet, and gods, Geralt can _feel_ what he’s feeling. The little moan that escapes him tells Geralt the reverse is probably true, too; he fists a hand into Regis’s hair, holding on to keep himself from spinning into total sensory overload.

It’s strange and perfect and something warm blooms in his belly. He smiles into the kiss, sliding his other hand up Regis’s neck to cup his jaw.

Distantly he wonders if this is just the bond, or if he was mistaken about not liking men. Or perhaps it’s only vampires. Or maybe just this vampire in particular.

If this is how kissing alone feels—

—how far _are_ they from town?—

He’s decent at using the bond normally, controlling what he pushes out and what he keeps to himself, but he’s so absolutely consumed by feeling, thoughts are slipping out of his grasp before he can stop them.

Things he doesn’t quite mean to share, but can’t deny anymore either. Subverbal things, tremorous half-ideas, too nascent to have made their way to syllables and tone and cadence—but if they had, they’d be things like _this could work_ and _gods, I want you_ , and _please don’t leave_.

And it feels like Regis is going to answer, the thought equivalent of a deep inhale, Geralt pulled into him that much further, and—

—he feels something like fear flooding the bond just before it shuts down altogether, going silent and icy, like a frost-covered plain on a moonless night.

Regis’s hands move to his chest, but Geralt pulls back before he can be pushed, as if struck by an attack he couldn’t counter.

“I’m sorry,” Regis says. “I shouldn’t have—I have to go.”

He walks hastily away in the direction of the village, leaving Geralt in every way alone.

* * *

They don’t know where the damn druids are, time is running out for him to find Ciri, and to top it all off, his connection to Regis is almost back to where it was before Fort Armeria.

They had been teetering on the brink of some emotional precipice; that fleeting moment of contact should have pushed them forward over the edge. Instead, they’ve slid backward, lost ground.

Regis gives him only monosyllabic answers in his head, all of them bereft of feelings or pictures, and only when absolutely necessary, choosing to speak out loud more often than not.

The Riverdell beekeepers don’t help matters any either, whether with their physical presence, or their comments about the portentous howls of their dogs and cats whenever Regis appears.

His deliberations with Regis on what to do next are all a few degrees colder in tone than is necessary—with Geralt needling Regis about his ‘boundless wisdom’—but he can’t stop himself. Everything is going to shit.

And that’s _before_ he runs into the girl who looks startlingly like Ciri, finds out a half-elf is out to murder him, and figures out that Cahir is a bloody spy.

He’s almost glad that Regis isn’t reading him anymore when he thinks it: very soon now, someone is going to get a thrashing.

* * *

“Ooof.”

Geralt groans as he slowly lowers his battered body to the cold ground. He’s close enough to the glow of the campfire to catch the barest hint of its warmth, but far enough away that he doesn’t have to speak to anyone.

A body moves between him and the light of the fire, blocking it momentarily. Of course, it’s the one person he doesn’t _need_ to speak to. Wonderful.

Regis crouches near him, extending a hand. An open canister containing a sharp-smelling salve rests in his palm.

“You deserved that.”

Geralt takes the salve and begins applying it to his welts.

 _Is that what I deserved?_ he sends, intending for it to be cutting; it comes out more tired than anything.

Regis frowns.

“There’s an old story that originates from Kovir—”

“Is this my punishment from you?” Geralt laughs sardonically. “Think I preferred Milva’s belt.”

Regis ignores him utterly.

“A young woman named Dushaah is made to marry a man she is not allowed to see. Rumor holds that he hides because he’s a monster, a demon. But he treats her well, and for all that the restriction makes their marriage a strange one, they’re largely happy with one another.

“But one night, she takes matters into her own hands, and uses a torch to get a look at her lover.

“The man—Strast—he’s not a creature at all, as it turns out. He’s something like a god, impossibly beautiful, with a youthful face and a pair of golden wings.

“The oil from Dushaah’s torch drips, however, awakening Strast and scalding him in the process. He flies away. Full of regret, Dushaah attempts to follow him. She wanders the world, alone, trying in vain to find her lost love.”

“And that’s it? She’s damned for all time because she didn’t trust immediately? Stupid story if you ask me.”

“Not at all. She has to fight her way through various underworld realms and numerous trials. She goes—quite literally—to several hells and back to prove her love for Strast. And Strast, for his part, sees the error of his snap judgement, and finds and saves his lover. They’re together then, for good and all.”

Geralt sets down the tin of salve, wipes his hands on his trousers.

“So, second chances are allowed.”

“Yes, absolutely. I daresay that’s the most important part of the story.”

Flicking a glance first to Milva and Dandelion, who are occupied putting out the fire, he reaches to Regis and places a hand on his knee.

_What about thirds?_

Geralt catches a pang of sorrow and regret before Regis clamps down on the bond and stands up, pulling free of Geralt’s hand.

_**This story isn’t about us.** _

_You sure about that?_

Regis shakes his head.

_**Geralt… We can’t. You wouldn’t understand—** _

_Back to this again._ Geralt scowls. _Because I’m a lowly human? And you’re a ‘god’? That’s some serious hubris, even for you._

_**That’s not at all the point I was trying to make. The allegory was meant to reference someone else entirely.** _

Fire reduced to embers, Geralt glances past the others and sees the slope of a blanketed form, now outlined in red beneath the harvest moon, facing away from him. Cahir is still, but Geralt can see and hear that his breathing is too harsh for actual sleep. Pretending, then. Geralt doesn’t blame him. He should really do the same.

He tosses the canister back at Regis, probably a little harder and faster than he should—but in a rare display of his formidable reflexes, Regis catches it with ease.

“What _are_ you trying to say here, Regis? That trust—blind trust—is something we should all aspire to? That kind of thing will get a man killed.”

“Sometimes. And sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps him alive.”

Geralt grumbles and starts to lay down for the night as Regis takes his leave of him.

_Fine. But I’m not marrying Cahir._

Regis doesn’t turn, just continues walking away, but Geralt can feel his smile, the first one he’s been privy to in sometime.

_**I think we can all agree that’s for the best.** _

* * *

When Regis realizes that scanning magic is responsible for the inaccurate information provided to whoever is spying on them, he tells Geralt about it through the bond.

After the wave of hurt and bitterness finally passes, he sends another one of gratitude back to the vampire.

He’s not sure he could have discussed it aloud.

* * *

The moon sits low on the horizon, more orange in hue than the blood red it was days before.

He’s said the last thing he needed to before they part: a proper apology to Cahir, and an acknowledgement that Ciri is most likely beyond saving. He doesn’t quite believe it himself, if only because of his dreams, but he can’t mislead them about the possibility of it.

Regis adjusts his hat and fiddles with his saddlebags, postponing his inevitable departure.

 _ **I don’t need the sihil,**_ he argues for the third time. _ **I barely know what to do with it. I have other means of keeping safe—**_

**__** _—that you can’t use unless you want to expose who you are. No. I need you whole and able to help take care of them._

Geralt does some absolutely useless checks through his own baggage, also stalling.

Despite the seeming futility of it, he adds: _I need you whole, period._

They lock eyes for several beats, and Geralt thinks of the first time he laid eyes on the vampire in Fen Carn. Just like then, there’s a moment of unrestrained emotion—not fear this time, but comfort: something very like a caress—before Regis reigns it in.

_**It’s not goodbye, you know. You can always reach out to me, and I to you. In here.** _

_Will you? Reach out?_

_**If you need me, I will be here,**_ Regis avoids answering the question.

Geralt sighs and mounts up. If Regis can’t be moved, then he has to get past this. They both do.

Neither of them looks back, and soon Geralt can no longer hear the mule’s footsteps against the grassy slopes of the foothills of Mount Gorgon.

* * *

He doesn’t _want_ to be so damned pleased to see the vampire again. It’ll just be more frustration, more thwarted affection, more questions without answers.

It’s almost as bad as it was with Yen—maybe worse, because there isn’t any damn release for it that he can see—

—but he sees Regis, then: sitting alone, his figure hunched forward over his campfire. His grey-streaked hair is twined in orange, reflecting the licking flames, and the light shines on his unguarded fangs when he smiles at them. It warms Geralt’s heart so thoroughly that not even Regis throwing Angoulême’s oft-uttered words back at him can dampen his spirits.

They are still friends, even if they’re not…

They are friends.

“Oho, look what the cat dragged in.”

_Yeah, yeah. Missed you, too._

* * *

Toussaint is lovely, if in a stilted, almost facile way.

It’s also… strange. Or at least, has a strange effect on their group, in a manner none of them can quite articulate.

It definitely doesn’t make things any clearer with regard to his situation with Regis.

First and foremost, there’s Fringilla Vigo. Who is almost certainly not what she seems. And he isn’t only referring to the fact that she hasn’t revealed she’s a sorceress to him yet.

They take their morning porridge in the servants’ dining hall, as they always do. 

_I don’t know who she’s working for._ _Or what they want with Ciri. But I’m willing to bet it’s not good. She’s grinding away at me for information every damn day._

_**Interesting choice of words.** _

Is that… jealousy he feels across their connection? The vampire could damn well _do_ something about it if he desired.

He scrapes at the bottom of his bowl, trying to radiate nonchalance.

_Just accurate._

_**Are you sure her... enthusiasm is entirely feigned?** _

_Didn’t say it was. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have an ulterior motive. How goes it with your, uh, charge?_

When Palmerin and Peyrac de Peyran came to him in the garden, entreating him to stop his hunt for the succubus of Beauclair, Geralt confessed to Regis he wasn’t sure how long he could delay, playing the men of the court against the Duchess before the latter threw him in the dungeon—or worse. The vampire suggested a plan: a way to keep the succubus safe, deceive them all, and earn Geralt a fair bit of coin in the process.

It had a catch, though.

Geralt doesn’t _want_ the damn coin. Not if it means—

But he can’t kill the succubus now. It’d just seem petty, and Regis would probably never forgive him.

_**She’s… difficult to treat with.** _

_Negotiations with a succubus that hard?_

Regis shifts in his seat, fiddles with his spoon.

_**Again, your turn of phrase is… precise. There’s only one currency I can use to barter with her.** _

Geralt tries not to wince, physically or mentally. Well, Regis seems to have moved on adequately. Why can’t he?

 _We suffer, don’t we?_ Geralt thinks at him, trying to smile.

It’s meant to be ribald, a man’s sort of joke. A complaint about being overwhelmed by the fairer sex, their charms and their neediness.

But there is a truth to it, too. At least, there is for Geralt. It hurts, to have been betrayed by Yen and rejected by Regis. The calculated advances of a haughty Nilfgaardian sorceress are apparently as close to intimacy as he can get.

 _ **Quite,**_ Regis responds flatly, not seeming terribly amused himself.

If he’s so unhappy with the situation, why doesn’t he—?

No, it won’t do to dwell on it.

There are more pressing matters at hand. Like the seating arrangements for the feast Chamberlain Le Goff asked him to consider.

He has an idea who he can sit next to.

* * *

_Think of Yen_ , he tells himself, fumbling in the library with Fringilla, tangled in ungainly prose and bitten by an untold number of papercuts.

It galls him to do it, considering Yen’s deception, but at least it’s territory he’s familiar with.

He sweeps a hand through her hair once, then abandons it; it’s not nearly long enough.

And it’s better when her eyes are shut: their hue is far too jarring.

Her body is too soft, winding into too many curves; it lacks a certain meticulous angularity, a muscular slimness he can imagine under the caress of his palms.

He buries his face in her cleavage so she won’t see his expression, but the smell he finds there is all wrong—it’s nothing like sage, anise, cinnamon…

By the time he’s hilt deep in her, he can’t pretend he’s thinking of Yen in the slightest.

But he forces his mouth to say her name, because there’s a limit to the amount of insult a sorceress can bear; the alternative would see his head—or perhaps another part of his anatomy, equally dear to him—on a platter, presented like a heron at a royal banquet.

And that’s not something a witcher can recover from—unlike others.

* * *

Fringilla is fast asleep, making tiny unconscious sounds beside him when he feels it: desire, overtaking him like a tide rushing up on the shore, and—he looks at the snoring sorceress impassively—it takes him a moment to realize it’s not his own.

The pleasure swells, and he can nearly picture the object of it: circular patterns dance before his eyes, a motif he swears he’s seen before. He feels the bony striations of a horn ghosting under his hand—

Godsdammit, Regis. Like he couldn’t feel worse about this.

He rises as quietly as he can, throwing off the increasingly stifling sheets to head to the wash room, hoping to splash some cold water on his face, when the feeling shifts.

Instead of stroking whorls of horn, Regis is gliding his fingers through strands of white hair, kissing a harsh, demanding mouth, brushing against a stubble laden cheek… or at least, he’s imagining doing so.

_...Regis?_

Unsurprisingly, the bond goes deathly still—Regis has always been better at closing off from him than the other way around—but that slip up was enough. Geralt knows what he saw, what he felt.

Regis was thinking of _him_ , too.

Naked, half hard, standing three feet away from a sleeping enchantress, Geralt scrubs both his hands over his face and tries not to groan.

They can’t go on like this.

* * *

He corners Regis near the garden pavilion after breakfast, the one where Regis eavesdropped on the knights when they brought up the succubus contract.

_We have to talk._

He half expects Regis to teasingly remind him that they aren’t _talking_ at all, not literally. But he just nods solemnly, which is much more worrying.

_**You’re quite right.** _

They must look strange to anyone else out for a morning stroll, the two of them standing in silence, making pained faces at one another. But Geralt can’t care less about that.

_This is mad. I can’t stop thinking about—and neither can you, apparently—_

Crossing his arms and sighing, Regis stares at the terrace tiles like he wishes they would crack apart and swallow him up. _**I know. I’m sorry. I—**_

_I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to—_

“Gentlemen,” Cahir interrupts.

Both witcher and vampire, having barely noticed his approach, whirl on him. He looks terrified at having gained their full attention.

“Please don’t—” Cahir raises a defensive hand to his forehead and winces, as if trying to protect his still healing stitches. “I’m sorry for—please, just let me say this.”

“Go on,” Regis urges him.

The Nilfgaardian sighs and makes a face like he’s steeling himself for what comes next.

“Milva says—and these are her words, not mine—that if you two don’t bloody get on with… whatever it is needs getting on with, she’s going to hit us both with a belt again.”

Geralt has to circle back through the last several words more than once to make sense of them.

“Me and…” he gestures between himself and Cahir, “ _you?_ ”

“Yes.”

Regis frowns. “Why?”

“Because,” Cahir tells them, “she says she can’t hit Regis.”

Geralt goes the sort of quiet where anyone, thoughtbound or otherwise, can tell he wants to throttle something. Regis chortles, seemingly for a lack of other options, but it’s drowned out by a thunderous wail of a cackle that echoes from further on in the garden.

Angoulême peers at them around a lavishly sculpted shrubbery, grinning like a fool. Milva stands a few paces further back, arms folded, bearing a grim expression, her entire posture rigid, challenging them to refuse her demand.

_**It would appear we’ve been caught out.** _

_Looks like._

Regis gives him a wan half smile.

**_I know you don’t like being told what to do._ **

Geralt shakes his head.

_Destiny is one thing. Milva is another entirely. I know which one concerns me more._

Cahir looks on anxiously, eyes darting between Geralt and Regis as they stare at one another, not saying a word.

“So—what should I say?”

“Tell Milva that you’re done being her errand boy. And she should mind her own damn business.” Geralt sighs. “And that we’ll sort it.”

* * *

The sound of the latch seems to echo as he shuts the door to Regis’s room behind him.

Perhaps the choice of venue is intimate, but Regis had agreed: no more hiding, and no more interruptions.

The vampire sits on the edge of his bed, looking toward the wall, hand folded, elbows resting on his knees, most of his profile obscured by the fall of his hair.

He doesn’t turn at the sound, but takes a deep breath.

_**Geralt—** _

“No,” Geralt stops him. “I want to say this out loud.”

_**And I cannot.** _

“What do you mean you—”

Regis turns to regard him, and then everything in Geralt’s head goes white.

The vision Regis shares with him is dominated by a vast, featureless expanse, like the surface of some unending sea, or perhaps a desert, washed out by the rays of the sun.

But, guided by Regis’s thoughts and emotions, Geralt realizes it’s neither.

What he’s looking at is _time_.

A single speck moves slowly forward along the plane of it.

A figure. A man. Regis. Perhaps as he believes himself to look—a little bit older, more gaunt, his shoulders heavy, his eyes tracking the ground. 

He walks through time alone.

And Geralt begins to understand.

“I told you in no uncertain terms: I am a coward,” Regis says. “Perhaps not in the way you imagined. But it’s true nonetheless.”

He looks back at his interlocked fingers.

“I’ve been alone for some time now, and had planned to be so for quite a while longer. But you… you’re… If I lose you. _When_ I…”

—pain, grief, fear echo in the bond—

Regis closes his eyes. “It’s selfish, I know. But I handled having my heart broken before very poorly indeed, and I know... I _know_ it would be worse this time. Forgive me, Geralt. I don’t think I have the strength.”

Geralt observes Regis in his sadness, and smiles.

It doesn’t happen in every fight, but sometimes there’s a moment, a turning point in the skirmish when one’s opponent makes a misstep, or shows their weakness: a move they don’t know well enough or a side they favor.

A perfect lucidity descends on the situation, then, illuminating everything that’s about to happen. Every step, every move leading up to the last. A moment when all is transformed from chance to certainty.

His battle of wills with Regis hasn’t been so deadly, of course—was never intended to wound. But there’s a similarity Geralt can’t help but see as such a moment dawns on him.

In short, it’s the moment he knows he’s won.

“That’s... it? That’s your argument?”

Regis looks up at him, surprised.

He laughs, perhaps a bit dismissively, but just once— _remember that he has problems_ , he recalls, keeping the thought to himself.

But problems are there to be solved.

He feels a prickle of anger from Regis, but he pushes back calm, patience, caring—and heat.

“Do you know,” he asks, crossing the room very slowly and entirely deliberately, “how witchers earn their living?”

Regis scowls. “I’m perfectly aware—”

“We take _contracts_. We negotiate. We wheedle and cajole and push, every single day. We might be better at that than the fighting.” He takes another step, “I can be very,” and another, “very,” and another, “ _very_ persuasive when I want to be.”

He stands, arms crossed, looking down at Regis’s seated form, and raises a provocative eyebrow. “You’re trying to tell me… that we have so little time together, that you’ve spent months on end stalling and hesitating and pushing me away? Your logic is somewhat fractured.”

Regis places his hands on the bed to either side of him, bracing himself, gaze darting around the room, tracking anywhere but to Geralt’s face. “When you put it like that—”

He crouches down, insinuating himself between the vampire's legs, forcing his attention.

In their shared vision, he draws down the sprawling, desolate plane of time, making it smaller and smaller, then lets it dissolve altogether, reducing eternity to a single moment.

“It’s my life—my lifetime—that you’re so worried about. Don’t you think you ought to ask me how I want to spend it?”

Regis’s lips part, but no sound issues from them, his fear beginning to yield to hope and need. Geralt places a hand gently on the flat of Regis’s thigh, making him shiver.

“I’m not making light of your situation, because I’m sure I don’t understand it. But. You’ll have to forgive me my blissful human ignorance a minute.” Geralt stretches up just slightly, balancing, catlike, his face hovering inches away from Regis’s, feeling shallow breaths on his own lips.

“This chance we have? This thing we’re feeling? How can you ignore it?”

“With _immense_ difficulty. If you hadn’t noticed.”

“Be brave, Regis.” _For me._

Geralt leans in to kiss him.

Regis is brave.

* * *

Boneless and spent, limbs draped over and curled around Regis’s, fast descending into sleep, he feels the fragment of the thought more than hears it:

_**To be surprised. How devastating. How wonderful.** _

* * *

_**Good morning.** _

Geralt blinks and stretches—though not enough to displace Regis, who is resting on his chest, humming softly, seemingly only half-awake himself.

_Hey. Morning._

The curtains are drawn, but the fractional part between them is illuminated with the glary yellow-tinged sun that usually heralds midmorning.

_Is it late? It feels late._

_**Mmmm. I think we missed breakfast.** _

Geralt gives a rueful little laugh, making Regis’s reclining form bounce.

 ** __** _I’m sure that’s not… conspicuous at all,_ he says, his expression caught between a grin and a grimace, thinking of Dandelion’s absence at their daily meal.

 _ **For most attendees, I would think not. And as for our companions…**_ Setting his chin neatly on Geralt’s sternum, Regis imagines Cahir’s terrified countenance from the previous day, _**I expect they will be well relieved.**_

Geralt sighs, letting his eyes fall shut a moment. _I’m supposed to take care of a Solpuga today. Another one. A juvenile, from the sound of it._ He opens one eye, and glances at the ceiling, thoughtful. _If I sent Cahir, do you think anyone would believe he was a witcher?_

 _ **My medical opinion is that his stitches will heal better if he doesn’t get eaten.**_ Regis pushes himself up to give Geralt a kiss between his brows.. _**The Solpuga can wait a day.**_

As much as shutting out the world and permanently barricading himself in Regis’s room sounds appealing, the haze of indifference and lethargy he’s been shrouded in since his arrival in Toussaint is lifting. He’ll never learn anything more about Ciri if he doesn’t leave the palace.

_We’ll have to leave sooner or later._

Regis kisses him once more, then rolls off the witcher with obvious reluctance, lying on his back. _**I suppose so. You slept well, at least?**_

 _Yeah, better than I have since… well, since I left Brokilon, actually. Maybe longer._ He hauls himself up to sitting, and a memory blossoms from a dark corner of his mind.

_I did have a dream._

Regis’s eyes go wide as he lights up the bond with concern. _**Ciri?**_

 _No_ , Geralt tells him, trying to tamp down the swell of the adoration in his chest at the vampire’s sudden alarm for his ward. _Not one of those. It was about… Dushaah and Strast, I think._

_**Oh?** _

_I think it was them…_ _It was different than the story. They were both lost. Something happened to them both._ He covers his eyes with the heels of his hands, trying to remember. _I don’t know._

It’s gone, fading in the sunlight; it’s probably not important anyway.

Resigned, Geralt makes his way out of bed, beginning to gather his things.

 _I should go._ _Those contracts—_

Between one blink and the next, Regis is out of bed and pushing him back into a chair in the corner of the room Geralt hadn’t even managed to see was there the night before.

 _ **—can wait, as I said. I’ve got a more important one.**_ He closes the distance between them, and straddles Geralt, lowering himself onto the witcher’s thighs. **_On an extremely dangerous beast that requires all your considerable focus._**

Geralt sucks in a breath and grips the chair for dear life, lust thrumming between them, raw and aching and wanton—he can _feel_ how hard Regis is without even touching him, _merciful mother_ —

 ** _My persuasive powers are quite substantial too, you see. Now,_ ** Regis presses his forehead to Geralt’s, letting his hair fall around Geralt’s face, **_close your eyes. You’ve inspired me._**

Confusion swirls through his arousal—he doesn’t want to tear his gaze away from his lap, reveling in the desperate promise of that view—but he does as he’s told.

 _Trust_ , the word hangs in his mind, airy, ephemeral. _Blind trust_.

_**Mmm, just so.** _

Bracing his hands on Geralt’s shoulders, he feels Regis concentrating, shifting… changing?

There’s a rush of air that sends his hair flying up, tousled by the sudden breeze from—what in all nine hells is happening? He wants badly to open his eyes, but manages to resist.

A bright exhilaration overtakes him, Regis feeling clever and pleased and wanting.

Then the sound—the sound makes it all clear.

He hears the beating of wings, and can’t help but grin.

Regis rocks forward into him, hands sliding behind his head, and he feels a gauzy embrace around him, around both of them, wrapping them up in a cocoon, hiding them away from the world for just a little longer.

* * *

_Oh gods—just a little—more—like— **Like that?** FUCK—aaah, gods, don’t stop, fuck, don’t stop— **Hadn’t, mmm, planned on it—oh, that’s—you really like that, don’t you?** Shut up, hnnnn— I’m gonna— **I know, I can feel it—** You can? When I—? **YES, oh, that’s—** Oh, fuck— **FUCKING HELL!** —_

—white hot searing blinding bursting _everything_ —

—then quiet, dark and delicate.

A grin.

_Regis. That language._

A laugh.

_**You’re a terrible influence on me, witcher. Absolutely terrible.** _

* * *

A third bout of knocking on the door starts up; whoever it is seems unlikely to leave on their own.

He hears the door creak as Regis pulls it open _just_ enough to show his face, blocking their visitor’s view of the rest of the room with his body.

The little ripple of irritation coming off the vampire tells him their guest’s identity before she even says a word. Geralt smiles into the pillow in spite of himself.

“Well, nuncle, ain’t you looking well today?”

“Is there something I can do for you, Angoulême?”

“Have you seen the witcher?”

“Can’t say that I have. I will tell him if I see him, however, that you require him.”

“Oh, _I_ don’t require nothing,” Angoulême says, and Geralt can practically hear her grin. “But a Mister Ferrybrass, I think it was, came by with a contract for him, out at the Pomerol vineyard. And, well. That dark-haired witch bitch has been skulking about, asking after him, and I thought he might want to know.”

He couldn’t say he didn’t expect that: Fringilla being somewhat irritated at her prey having gone to ground. Any goodwill he’d built up with her is certainly dashed to pieces now; he’ll have to think of another less intimate way to lead her by the nose.

“I will pass the messages on, if I can,” Regis says, starting to close the door.

“Nuncle.”

“Yes, dear girl?”

“I think it’s good. You an’ him, I mean. You two are…” she pauses, uncharacteristically thoughtful. “It’s good. The only thing I can’t figure is which of you is the one that takes it—”

“Angoulême, I advise you to think _very_ carefully about finishing that sentence.”

“Right you are,” she laughs.

Tomorrow. He’ll go to Pomerol tomorrow.

* * *

Breathing heavily, motionless, covered in the guts of a korred, some kilmulis, and gods know what else, Geralt reaches out to Regis, explaining what he learned in the caves below the vineyard.

 _ **I’ll pack my things and tell the others,**_ Regis thinks immediately.

_Thank you._

There’s a long pause, then, and he begins to clean and sheathe his sword; he can feel Regis holding back.

_Out with it._

He feels something like a sigh.

_**Would you still—if you had known the truth about Yennefer, known she wasn’t responsible for… Would you still have—?** _

_Yes_ , Geralt cuts through his doubts, all exasperation. _Yes, of course. I’ll always care for her. She’ll always be dear to me, and, more importantly, to Ciri. But she’s not my—What I feel about—I love you,_ he sulks, as though it’s so obvious he shouldn’t really have had to say it at all.

A glow radiates back at him, like Regis can’t quite find the words. Of all times. But Geralt feels his heart fluttering, like a bat’s wings.

For just an instant, Geralt stifles his murderous hatred of Vilgefortz and the gruesomely detailed ideas about all the ways he’s going to make the mage suffer, and concentrates on Regis preening in silence.

 _Idiot_ , he thinks, laughing.

* * *

He hears her increasingly testy retorts echo in the corridor just outside the kitchen, and freezes, quieting his breathing. She and Regis sound like they’re engaged in what might be euphemistically called a vigorous discussion. He’s arrived a little early, then.

_Sinking your teeth into her, I hear._

_**Not literally,**_ Regis grumbles. _**Yet.**_

“...Destiny catches up with people, and not the other way around,” Fringilla snarls at the vampire. “Do you understand that? Do you understand that, Lord Regis Terzieff-Godefroy?”

 _Missed a couple of your names,_ Geralt chuckles.

_**You’re exceedingly clever, now please be quiet.** _

“Better than you think, Madam Vigo,” Regis tells her coolly. Geralt can feel Regis’s grin coiling like smoke as he exhaustively destroys her arguments, one after the other.

“Life, Madam Vigo, may be a dream, may also finish as a dream… But it’s a dream that has to be dreamed actively, which is why Lake Muredach awaits us—”

A stool scrapes against the floor as she stands abruptly. “Muredach? What do you—? Rhys-Rhun? Is _that_ what you mean?”

“No—” Regis tries to backtrack, panicked, voice gone thin. “That’s not what I—!”

Geralt tears around the corner, eyes flashing furiously. “Quiet, Regis! Shut _up!_ ”

“Thank you, Lord Godefroy,” Fringilla sneers triumphantly, gliding out of the room and past him down the corridor, hissing a tight “no thanks to you, witcher” to him as she goes.

Geralt sits at the table across from Regis.

_Do you think she bought it?_

_**Oh, undoubtedly. The confrontation was too much to resist. She seems the type that enjoys seeing things in ruin.** _

_Well, she should be very happy at Rhys-Rhun, then._

He turns, meeting Cahir and Angoulême’s stunned gazes.

“Right,” he tells them. “Time to go.”

* * *

The ship graveyard lies before Stygga castle, emanating danger, smashed hulls exposed like gaping maws, and broken masts pointing skyward as if some horrible creature was clawing its way up from the earth.

Regis rides beside him at the head of the party, as always. They’re less than a quarter of a mile from the looming wrought iron gate barring their way to the keep; Geralt can begin to make out a handful of sentries posted there.

**_This is it._ **

Geralt knows exactly what he means, and asks anyway.

_This is what?_

_**The end of your quest. Ciri. She’s here.** _

_Yes. But it doesn’t have to be an end to everything._

Regis doesn’t answer, quiet within and without, and Geralt wants to reassure the vampire, but he can’t. Vilgefortz almost certainly has a number of guards in his employ, and as much as he’d take one of Milva and Cahir for every ten of them, the numbers may still not come out in their favor.

Geralt looks at Regis, and then back at the others, and brings their caravan to a halt.

Milva rolls her eyes, Cahir looks tastefully away, and Angoulême stares.

“Go on, then,” Milva tells him.

He leans over in his saddle, lays a hand to Regis’s cheek, and kisses him.

 _ **Geralt of Rivia,**_ Regis tells him as he does so, _**you are not allowed to die. I expressly forbid it.**_

Geralt parts the kiss but leaves his hand on Regis’s face, trying to hold onto him for as long as he can.

_Same goes for you._

A shadow engulfs him, something old and powerful; it’s so sinister that for a split second, Geralt assumes it’s some kind of magical ward on the castle before he realizes it’s coming from _Regis_.

 _ **Oh, don’t worry about me**_ , he tells the witcher darkly, smiling in an odd way Geralt has never seen before.

It’s not as though he’d _forgotten_ Regis was a vampire, of course, but he’s suddenly reminded what that means in its entirety, and it sends a chill up his spine.

But Geralt twists his fingers through a lock of Regis’s hair one more time, and the feeling fades. He’s just the barber-surgeon from Dillingen again, steady and warm and entirely Geralt’s.

Before he can say, can even think anything more, their entire hansa finds their eyes drawn to the skies.

Scores upon scores of rooks, who until now had been sitting calmly amongst the wrecked ships and circling lazily in search of carrion, have formed into a colossal, whirling cloud. Screeching and cawing, they fly off to the castle at a frantic pace.

Regis’s eyes appear to be following them, tracking their movement, but gradually Geralt realizes he’s actually guiding them.

“Our advance guard,” he explains. “I’ll catch up to them, go secure us a warm welcome.”

His hand brushes Geralt’s as he gives over the reins to his stallion and dismounts. He gives Geralt one last smile, as if he’s handing his kindness to the witcher for safekeeping until the battle is done.

Then his eyes go eerily black.

Geralt nearly pities Vilgefortz’s lackeys. Nearly.

**_It’s time. Let us see where this path leads._ **

Geralt watches as he dissolves into mist and races toward the castle.

* * *

One moment he’s hacking at some acolyte, his steel biting deeply into the flunky’s shoulder, and the next, his vision swims, like his brain is floating in a cask of Est-Est.

The sight of blood hasn’t affected him in the slightest since before Trials, so the fact that he reacts to the wound at all is disorienting.

It’s both more ghastly and edifying when, for a split second, he reflects that it looks absolutely _delectable_ , and he realizes what’s going on. Shit.

_Regis._

_**Geralt! You didn’t tell me she was—she was so—so—** _

The vampire’s thoughts tilt and swoop, and Geralt has to pour all his focus into the fight to keep from being slashed to pieces.

 _ **—stubborn!**_ He whoops, laughing. _**Put me in my place, right away. Lion cub, indeed. She’s bloody impossible,**_ he curses.

Geralt grunts as he fends off another attack. Dammit. It’s good that Regis helped thin the herd for the rest of them, but he wishes he could have done it another way.

_You found Ciri? Are you still with her?_

_**You didn’t tell me she was—**_ Regis repeats, stumbling through the words.

_Get it together, Regis._

_**You didn’t tell me she was she was just like you**_, he finishes, all drunken fondness.

Geralt nearly laughs in spite of himself as he thrusts his blade into the lackey’s throat, starting to feel impaired himself. This is going to get him killed.

 _Regis,_ he tries to regain a modicum of sobriety, _cut it out—get back to Ciri, and stop with the blood—_

 _ **Oh, and she says you’re to beware,**_ he relays off-handedly.

Geralt’s stomach drops, a lurching sense of foreboding.

_What? What does that mean? Regis!_

And just like that, the inebriation recedes, and Regis is gone again, leaving Geralt to the fight. 

* * *

It happens fast, but he remembers every second of it. It’s etched into his mind. He knows it will be there forever.

He can’t feel Regis at all as he searches for Yen. After that single drunken display, the bond has been deathly quiet, and Geralt suspects the vampire is more deeply intoxicated than he wants the witcher to know. They’ll discuss it later, if he makes it through this.

_Be careful, Regis. Stay with Ciri._

But Regis does neither.

Vilgefortz lays glowing hands on the vampire, and before he can move, he watches— _feels_ —his world burn.

And he’s burning, too: hears himself screaming, cursing, feels everything that was Regis slipping away from him, disintegrating, reduced to nothing, and he has to let it, or he’ll lose his own mind in the horror of it.

There’s no goodbye, no last words, no heartfelt feelings or remembrances. Regis is there, defending him and Yennefer one moment, and gone, a blob of molten ooze the next.

Regis dies. Like Milva died, like Cahir and Angoulême must have died. He’s wiped from the vast plane of time, leaving Geralt behind, the place he once occupied in the witcher’s mind a smoldering ruin. 

When Vilgefortz is dead, he blames the illusion he cast on the amulet he acquired in Toussaint, but he privately thinks it was his rage, his uncontrollable need for vengeance that brought his ability forth. He avenges his thoughtbound, and when it’s done, he wishes he could do it again.

In the quiet of the chamber, he feels Yen try to reach into his head, and even with all her raw magical talent, it still feels unsettling and unnatural compared to the bond, like fingers wiggling in his brain.

She pulls back almost immediately, likely finding the landscape of his mind completely changed from the last time they found themselves amid scattered piles of rubble; indeed, it must be nearly unrecognizable.

“Who was he?”

“A friend,” he manages, his voice sounding distant to his own ears.

“Was he human?”

He shuts his eyes. He can’t speak, and the one person he wants to not-speak to is gone.

She embraces him, then. Places a kiss in his hair, and whispers to him, “Ciri.”

Yes, Ciri. It’s not over yet. They have to find her. He has to move on, from one destiny to the next.

He takes one last look at the melted column. It hurts him horribly to do it, but he memorizes it: all that remains of his friend and lover, the end of his journey.

Geralt will never forget it, not as long as he lives.

* * *

A voice is screaming his name in his head.

Grief and longing rip through him, searing his throat and leaving the taste of ashes in his mouth.

He snaps to sitting, fists clenching into the bed sheets. The fury of a full-bodied terror grips him, and he has _no idea where it’s coming from_.

If the others hadn’t told him, he wouldn’t have even known it was _his_ name the voice was calling.

When they found him, he didn’t know anything at all.

They looked at him with those haunting yellow eyes, the same ones he saw in the mirror, and they said he was a witcher.

The word caused something to squirm in the back of his brain, and he knew it was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

You kill monsters, they said.

He felt less certain about that part.

Kaer Morhen is the name of keep, ancient and grim and hewn into the mountainside, where he lives now, with a handful of others like him.

They’re… kind to him in their way. All of them, but especially Triss, and he supposes it could be worse.

He spends his days training in the courtyard, and when his palms wrap around steel or silver, he comes alive for a while. He doesn’t have to think, just acts, and it’s startling how much his body remembers that he’s forgotten.

The nights are harder. He’s alone with himself—which is a strange thing to think—who else would he be alone with? But the idea won’t let him be.

He often tosses and turns in his room in the tower. He doesn’t get up to pace or to stare out the window when he can’t sleep; something about the sight of the waning moon makes him sad in a distant, wistful way.

The voice, though, the one he heard calling out to him just now— _that_ makes his guts churn, makes every last part of him _ache_.

There was such agony in the sound of it. What lost memory had it been ripped from? Maybe it was one of the boys going through that procedure they mentioned—the Trial of the Grasses.

But it somehow felt so much more personal.

He doesn’t fall back asleep that night. The voice doesn’t come back, but the memory of it haunts him.

Before he can ask Vesemir about it the next morning, the Salamandra attack.

* * *

He moves on, or tries to.

Eventually he gets used to everyone knowing more about him than he does. He pretends to be the Geralt of Rivia they all remember, and soon the pretending gets easier, and one day it doesn’t feel entirely like a mask, like maybe he’s regained a little of himself. He’s not the man he was, but he’s not a shadow either, a strange sort of wraith haunting his own life.

Now and then, he gets the feeling of not being alone. There’s a shift in his surroundings, as if a bird has soared over his head, momentarily blocking out the sun: something removed from him, but affecting him all the same.

His emotions are a mess. There’s no shortage of people willing to tell him how witchers can’t properly feel things. Somehow, he doesn’t think this is what they mean.

He buys a draught of mandrake cordial to use in witcher potions, and finds himself gripping the bottle tighter than he should be. He sits down with the Scoia'tael commandos for a dinner of a modest fish stew, and all the breath goes out of him. A dracolizard evades his sword strike by taking to the air with a flap of its leathery wings, and he’s so captivated by the movement he almost misses dodging its next attack.

Odd phrases and words catch in his brain without warning, and even as he begins to recover stray stitches of his memory, following in the kingslayer’s footsteps, he can’t find the thread that pulls them together.

* * *

He rolls over one morning, in the bed he shares with Triss in Novigrad, and _remembers_.

He’d pieced a lot of his past back together on his own, and after what Letho said to him at Loc Muinne, about Yennefer and the Hunt, he’d slotted a few more pieces into place.

But it had been like trying to arrange the bones of some dead creature he’d never seen before: the structure of a life, but not its substance.

Today, though, it all comes flooding back to him: every trace of himself he’s been so desperately seeking, and some he’d rather have stayed lost, too.

Every monster he’s tracked, every Trial he’s endured, every godsforsaken corner of the continent he’s ever travelled to… everything. All of it at once, so many memories he can barely stay afloat, thinks he might drown in them.

He slips out of bed and paces about the room—it’s too much to simply lie there, to be overtaken by so many things, places, people—

The sylvan—Dandelion’s lute—Braenn and Essie Daven and Stregobor and Yarpen Zigrin and—

Yen, gods, Yen: angry violet eyes and hair like a storm on the sea—

And—there’s suddenly a shortage of air in the room— _Ciri_ —how could he have forgotten Ciri?

He’d known their _names_ yesterday, yes, but not who they are—not who they are to _him_.

An elegant frame, but lacking the portrait within—

 _Oh_. Oh gods—

Fen Carn. Fort Armeria. The Yaruga, Toussaint, Stygga Castle.

Onyx black eyes and clever hands. Tousled dark grey hair and a sharp smile and words and words and _words_.

And how he _felt_ when—when—oh, it feels like his heart’s been ripped open.

_Regis._

The memory hits him so hard, he stumbles backward, crashing into a table.

Roused by the sound, Triss sits up, bleary-eyed but alarmed, chestnut locks falling down from where she’s pinned them on the top of her head.

“Geralt? What’s wrong?”

He opens his mouth, tries to speak, but nothing comes out.

He’d heard him, heard Regis’s voice in his head, back at Kaer Morhen, and felt… something, someone... watching him ever since. He didn’t know how to explain it then, but it seems painfully obvious now. It’s impossible, but there’s no other answer for it.

Regis is _alive_.

Triss reads what’s happening on his face before he can explain.

“You remembered something,” she murmurs.

“Someone,” he breathes. “I remembered someone.”

Her eyes fall shut, and her whole body goes still, like she’s bracing for the inevitable pain, and, yeah, it makes Geralt feel like shit—she didn’t know about Regis, couldn’t have known—and it’s just one more time she’s being pushed aside.

It’s hard for him to focus on that. He can apologize to her later. Or he can try, at least.

But it’s been more than three years—he can’t keep Regis waiting any longer. If he’s waiting for Geralt at all, that is.

“Please, don’t go yet,” Triss reaches for him, nearly pleading with him. “I know you will, but—”

“I’ll be back,” he promises. “At least I’ll… I’ll be back in a minute. I’m sorry, Triss, I…”

She twists away from him, trying to hide the tears forming in her eyes, and he knows there’s nothing he can say to her right now that would make any of it right.

He throws on a shirt and trousers and staggers out into the street. He barrels blindly down the alley in the general direction of Hierarch Square, though he has no particular destination in mind. He’s simply desperate for fresh air and space, for the sky, for anything away from the closed off little chamber his mind has become in the last three years.

It’s raining softly, the morning still quiet, only a few merchants setting out their wares carefully beneath waxed canvas awnings for the day’s sales.

In his head, he screams.

_Regis? Regis? REGIS!_

He repeats it like an incantation, something used to summon the dead. He pushes the words out, hard and far, unsure how strong the bond is after all this time or if the feeling will carry.

There’s no response for agonizing moments, and people are staring openly at him now, the distress in his face obvious and unsettling.

He starts to wonder if the shouts he heard before were little more than dreams, just anguish made palpable, the echoes of the vampire’s dying cries haunting him.

Then he feels it: an unfamiliar sense of displeasure, like someone trying to shrug him off, push him away. It’s not Regis. The feeling is...darker, more brooding somehow. Whatever it is, it’s resisting him utterly.

Which only makes Geralt push harder, cry out louder.

_Regis. Are you there? REGIS!_

_**...Geralt?** _

Even existing as nothing more than a thought, absent entirely of vocal chords, Regis’s voice is a sad, dessicated thing in Geralt’s head, crackling like a dying fire.

But Geralt’s throat swells when he hears it; he catches himself against the nearest fence post, knees buckling. The sky cracks and the drizzle slips into a downpour; he closes his eyes, an impossibly enormous grin splitting his face.

 _Yeah_ , he thinks back with a broken sort of tenderness, the rain running over his face like tears. _Yeah, it’s me. I’m here._

_**How—? You were dead, you died—** _

**__** _I thought the same thing about you._

They both think it, almost as one thought: _**Where are you?**_

Regis starts to reply, but Geralt cuts him off.

_Before you tell me… Regis. There’s something strange. In the bond. It’s different now. This is going to sound crazy, but… I don’t think we’re alone in here._

He feels Regis drift away from him for long seconds, distracted. The vampire sends him a small sigh when he returns.

 _ **Oh, dear**_. _ **I thought that it was only on my end. It’s… hard to explain. I’m in Toussaint. Would you—can you—?**_

 ** __** _I’m coming to you,_ Geralt thinks immediately. _I’ll leave today._

Joy and weariness come to him, intermixed, along with overwhelming relief. It could be his or Regis’s, or both.

**_Come to the place I met you and Cahir, near—_ **

**__** _I know it. You’ll be there?_

The rain is pelting down on him now, and, the haze of euphoria having faded a bit, Geralt realizes how completely soaked to the skin he is.

 ** _I can’t,_** Regis thinks with a pang of regret. _ **But Dettlaff will be. And I’ll explain everything on the way.**_

The feeling returns again, the foreign one. It’s like someone is perpetually standing in his peripheral vision, and he can never turn to see them.

He grits his teeth, more irritated than is probably reasonable. But that shadow in the bond in starting to grate on him, and it’s always a bad sign when Regis gets cryptic.

**__** _Who the hell is Dettlaff?_

* * *

He can make it to Toussaint in two weeks if he sails on the Pontar and then rides on from Vizima and pushes himself, changing horses as frequently as he can.

Triss has left the flat by the time he returns. He finds a note that wishes him all the best with Yen.

He’s dockside when a messenger catches him, bearing a letter from none other than the sorceress of Vengerberg herself, entreating him to meet her in the village of Willoughby, just outside of Vizima.

Son of a barghest. He hasn’t seen her since the Hunt took her.

It’s a day for reunions, apparently.

The paper the note is written on is heavy stock, with a Nilfgaardian maker’s watermark; the fact that Yen’s choice of meeting place is spitting distance from the palace is likely no coincidence, and he doubts after hearing whatever she—or Emhyr—wants, that he’ll simply be allowed to go his own way.

Regis has to come first.

He’ll ride south to Gors Velen instead, out of the way of the palace, and head east on horseback.

He sends the messenger back to her, to let her know he’ll be late in arriving; he pays the man extra to wait a few days to leave, giving him time to get south of Maribor.

He sends another one on to Crinfrid, the last place Vesemir had been seen, looking into a nasty alghoul infestation.

And then he takes to the road. He and Regis tell one another everything that’s happened as he rides.

It takes a while to get through it all, as Regis still has to rest a significant portion of the time; regeneration is apparently exhausting. Given what happened to Regis, Geralt doesn’t find it hard to believe.

But five days into the journey, his impatience to arrive is tempered somewhat by disbelief; he’s glad he has time to process everything he hears.

It explains a lot.

Dettlaff van der Eretein, a higher vampire from Nazair, is the reason Regis is alive.

He took it upon himself to save Regis—at a moment when Geralt walked away, when he didn’t even know Regis _could_ be saved—and the consequences of that act of kindness are profound.

It made Dettlaff his blood-kin, his thoughtbound tells him. Taking such a step created not just an inviolable social covenant between the two vampires, but a concrete link as well: something visceral, chemical. It’s not as finely tuned as his bond with Geralt by any stretch, but the fact remains: he’s tied to Dettlaff for the foreseeable future.

And, in a quirk of fate none of them could have predicted, owing to his blood bond with Regis, Dettlaff is now tied to Geralt as well.

Dettlaff doesn’t cast fully formed thoughts or feelings in his head like Regis, but nonetheless he’s there, taking up space, sometimes looming with eerie stillness, sometimes squirming like a restrained beast. Trying to get any information out of the half-bond is futile, like trying to use clues given in pantomime to decode a cipher.

It goes without saying that he’s indebted to Dettlaff forever—he’s getting Regis back because of the man, he’s getting half of his life back.

But that doesn’t mean Geralt has to like any of it.

Regis doesn’t try to placate him or make light of the situation, for once simply letting him be for days after the revelation, to the point that Geralt longs to hear his voice again.

Soon, they’ll be together again. Not alone, but they’ll manage.

It’s Regis. He can manage just about anything.

* * *

Once he’s south of Mayena, he rides along much the same route he did with the hansa, and it feels as though his memories are not only back, but more vivid than ever. And so, unfortunately, is the pain that accompanies them.

He’s tired from days of riding with little rest, and heavy of heart when he reaches the appointed place in the hills beyond Belhaven, dismounting from his fourth Roach this trip.

There’s no flickering campfire, no roasting meal or mule with packed bags; no trappings of humanity whatsoever. It’s meant to be a meeting of two beings who are perfectly capable of seeing in the dark, and apparently Dettlaff didn’t deem any of that necessary. It’s a telling character note, and Geralt stores it away.

His back to Geralt, the man before him is darkness incarnate, from his jet black hair to the ebony duster draped over his tall, lean figure. He doesn’t turn immediately on Geralt’s approach, though he most certainly heard him.

Meaning that the vampire is just being dramatic.

Geralt hates this already.

“So. You are the witcher.”

He pivots ever so slowly, and Geralt sees for the first time the unwelcome guest that his consciousness has been hosting for the last few years.

His eyes are a chilly blue, bright and fierce and everything that Regis’s aren’t. The broad, smooth lines of his face look as though they could be sculpted from marble, and seem about as likely as such to be moved by anything Geralt has to say.

“Yep,” Geralt says, excessively informal, obviously trying to irritate. “That’s me.”

Dettlaff rakes his gaze up and down Geralt’s person before crossing his arms over his chest. He doesn’t frown, exactly, but dips his head slightly, and something bristles in their half-bond.

 _Gods_ is that unnerving.

“Regis tells me you have this… connection.”

“I’m his—” Geralt starts, and then realizes he’s said exactly what he wants to. He shrugs. “I’m his.”

“Hmm,” Dettlaff intones, looking unconvinced.

 _ **Everything all right?**_ Regis chimes in, in that irritating but endearing way of his. Geralt begins to smile—

—until he sees Detlaff react to it, too, looking exasperated. Geralt feels something thin and cold in his chest. He wasn’t ready for that.

He doesn’t answer Regis, and would bet anything Dettlaff is ignoring him too.

“Where have you been these past years?” Dettlaff’s voice is flat when he asks, and Geralt is pretty sure he already knows the answer. Regis has to have relayed Geralt’s story already, explained everything the witcher said.

He clearly just wants Geralt to repeat it, to vet the tale for himself, or to try to ascertain any insincerity about Geralt’s manner. In short, he’s assessing if Geralt is a threat to Regis.

Geralt finds himself respecting the vampire’s motives at the same time as he wants to hit him squarely in his perfectly chiseled jaw.

“You want the long version or the short?”

Dettlaff says nothing.

“Short,” Geralt continues. “Okay. Right. Regis died, and then _I_ died, got resurrected, rode with the Wild Hunt, lost all my memories, was accused of regicide, fought a dragon…” He stops listing his various misfortunes on his fingers. “You know what, this version is still pretty long, isn’t it? I came as quickly as I could.”

Dettlaff actually frowns this time.

_This guy, Regis? This is the guy?_

_**Geralt.** _

He sighs. Gods spare him any more higher vampire theatrics.

“You’re protective of him,” Geralt says plainly, ready to be done with the interrogation portion of the proceedings. “I get it, all right? I…”

He crosses his own arms, unconsciously mirroring Dettlaff’s stance, and looks at the ground. “I’m glad you are. I couldn’t save him, and then I didn’t even... I’m _glad_ he has you.”

For the briefest instant, Geralt wishes he could get in Dettlaff’s head, just… _show_ him what he feels for Regis, put it his heart on display and get this inane bullshit over with.

But as the intimacy of the idea strikes him, he recoils from it.

No, fuck it. Even if such a thing were possible, which Geralt very much doubts, there’s no need for it. Regis taught him to trust, and he’s trying, dammit. Dettlaff can try, too.

He feels something from Dettlaff—it’s hard to read, as expected, but there’s something… solid, sturdy about the reaction this time. Between it and the look on the vampire’s face, he suspects it may actually be a sort of grudging acceptance.

Dettlaff turns away again, and sets off.

“Come with me. He’s waiting.”

* * *

The mountainside crevice isn’t the one his hansa hid out the blizzard in after their departure from Toussaint, but there’s enough similarity that it gives Geralt goosebumps.

“A cave?” he asks Dettlaff as they ascend to its opening, trying to keep his voice neutral so as not to disturb their hard won peace for a little longer.

He can’t help but think that this isn’t the dwelling Regis would have chosen for his recuperation. Another of what appear to be many differences between Regis and Dettlaff, who by all appearances is something of a vampire’s vampire.

“Humans... complicate matters. I needed a place we wouldn’t be disturbed, where I could call on aid, should I require it.”

Geralt isn’t sure what he means by ‘aid’ exactly, until he sees Dettlaff look up to a ledge above the cave’s entrance.

An ekimmara scuttles out from behind a boulder, revealing itself at Dettlaff’s command. Its services as sentinel no longer needed, it scurries away.

Geralt clenches his sword hand, and keeps his arm at his side. What would Vesemir think of him?

The dark of the cave’s opening lies before them, then. In an unexpected expression of deference, Dettlaff halts before entering, and gestures for Geralt to lead.

“He’s been better,” Dettlaff admits, “these past weeks, since you returned to his thoughts.”

“So have I,” Geralt says truthfully.

His heart is hammering so fiercely in his chest as he descends to the first chamber of the cavern that he’s worried it will break from its cage entirely.

A shape comes into his view: a human form, wrapped in blankets, propped up against a rocky ledge; Geralt dilates his pupils in the dim light to pull in every detail he can.

In some ways, he expected worse, given the damage that Vilgefortz had wrought. Regis had told him what to expect as best he could, so his physical state doesn’t shock Geralt. Nonetheless, he feels a wave of empathy as he takes it all in.

Covered up to his chest, the outline of him that Geralt can see is clear, his shape just as Geralt remembered it, except much more gaunt. It’s clear, though, that he still has much to do in the way of healing. His tissue still seems to be in the process of knitting itself back together, giving him an uneven patchwork look.

The whole of his right shoulder is bereft of flesh, as is a strip on the right side of his neck, striated muscle and tendons exposed, the open wound tapering into a bright white line at his collarbone. His skin, where present, is deathly pale, the weave of newly created veins and arteries clearly visible beneath. All that’s left of his splendid locks is a few meager wisps crowning his head, more silver streaked than before.

But his eyes, blinking open slowly at the sound and feeling of Geralt’s approach… his eyes are just the same, dark as midnight and every bit as alluring. Geralt’s throat goes tight. He’s never, ever been so glad not to have to speak before.

 _Look_ , he thinks very very softly, _what the cat dragged in._

Warm fierce bright needy adoring _everything_.

_**Oh, my love. How I’ve missed you.** _

Geralt is kneeling at his side then, somehow having crossed the cavern without realizing it. He cups the intact side of Regis’s face with the utmost care, pressing soft kisses to his mouth. He uses Regis’s own feelings to guide him, getting as close as possible without hurting him.

Regis draws back momentarily, raising a hand to Geralt’s face. His arm only trembles a bit under the strain of the movement; he’s stronger than his appearance would suggest. Geralt grasps his hand anyway, holding it against his cheek.

Their thoughts dart back and forth, one on the heels of another, crisp and rapid fire, all atop the quiet steady undercurrent of _oh thank gods_ and _need you closer now_ and _please never leave_.

_**How horrible am I?** _

_Not even a little._

_**Oh, your face—** _

**__** _It’s nothing—stupid cockatrice—_

_**I could have healed that better than whoever** — **Don’t misunderstand me, it makes you look ruggedly dashing, as does the beard. I admit I’m surprised to see you with one.**_

_Well, I lost my barber. You don’t mind it? I was thinking of keeping it. Regis, your hair—_

**_Ugh , don’t remind me._ **

And Geralt has to chuckle at that bit of wounded pride—a chafed vanity he usually associates with coquettish sorceresses—showing up in someone who doesn’t even have a reflection. He’s so completely disarmed by it he can’t help but kiss Regis again.

The vampire moves against him more ardently this time, tongue needily stealing into Geralt’s mouth. He desperately wants to take this further and knows they can’t, alternating flashes of heat and guilt running through him.

 _ **I’m not made of paper,**_ Regis grouses at his indecision, shamelessly sucking on the witcher’s lower lip even as Geralt can feel the toll the effort is taking on him.

_Regis, gods, I—_

Dettlaff, emerging from the corner of the chamber, entirely forgotten, clears his throat pointedly. Geralt looks over his shoulder, scowling reflexively.

“He still needs rest,” Dettlaff warns in that ash coated voice of his. The rebuke seems to be focused entirely on Geralt, despite Regis being an obvious and vigorous participant.

“I know,” he grits out. “I know.”

Reluctantly, Dettlaff turns and paces back, cloaking himself in shadow again.

 _This,_ Geralt seethes, flicking a sharp, annoyed glance in Dettlaff’s direction _, is not going to work._

Regis smiles. _**Patience. He’s been my constant companion for years now. This is just as startling for him as it is for you.**_

Geralt doesn’t reply that that’s not a particularly comforting thought.

 _How many vampires do I have to trust, exactly?_ he snarks instead.

**_As many as have earned it._ **

_I’ll trust you. We can go from there._

_**A fine plan.**_ Regis nods approvingly, then sighs. Geralt can feel him trying to snuff out the little flicker of lust in his breast for the time being, his thoughts shifting to more practical topics.

_**You mentioned something… about a note? From Yennefer?** _

_That’s who signed it, anyway. I have this feeling it has something to do with Emhyr. And Ciri._

_**What do you mean? Where’s Ciri now?** _

He wishes he could fucking answer that question. Geralt bites back his anger at Emhyr, at the Hunt, at himself for acting so rashly in Rivia.

 _Ciri is… gone,_ he thinks, not sure if now is the time to explain about her abilities.

 _ **Again?** _ Likely sensing Geralt’s dour mood coming on, Regis’s tone is light. **_I don’t mean to criticize, Geralt, but you really need to keep a better eye on the girl._**

Geralt huffs an irritated laugh through his nose and slumps to sitting, letting himself rest gently against Regis’s good side. 

_There it is: the mild reproach—_

_**Perhaps you could attach a bell to her—** _

_The constant criticism, mixed with affection. What did I do without it?_

Regis snorts and lets his head fall forward on Geralt’s shoulder.

Seconds later, Geralt hears Dettlaff’s feet shuffling closer; laughter is apparently forbidden, now, too. He’s going to kill that bloody vampire.

Geralt shakes his head. They are both going to have to hear this, he supposes.

“Jokes aside,” he says, half twisting in Dettlaff’s direction, “I don’t want to leave, but I may have to for a while. I asked Vesemir to join me in Vizima—well, Willoughby, just nearby. He’s my old teacher, from the School of the Wolf. He’d written to me in Novigrad.”

Geralt takes Regis’s hand, runs his thumb back and forth across the vampire’s knuckles.

“The Wild Hunt’s been seen on the continent. Again. And with Yen’s letter arriving… it can’t be a coincidence.” He looks up, the gravity of the topic settling in his face and in the bond. “Something’s coming, Regis. I’ve had dreams about it.”

“The Red Riders? Truly?” Regis says, finally speaking aloud. His is voice a quiet rasp, rough from disuse. He nods, expression severe. “You must go,” he agrees.

_Be back as soon as I can._

_**I know, dear one.** _

It’s silent for long moments except for the sound of Dettlaff’s incessant pacing.

Regis frowns, thoughtful; Geralt can practically feel the wheels of thought turning in his head. _Oh, no._

“You said… when you met them at the Hanged Man’s Tree… the Wild Hunt were not the spectral riders you imagined they were.”

“No,” Geralt confirms warily. “Ciri said as much, too. They’re Aen Elle, if you can believe it.”

“Mages and warriors, both. Mmmm,” Regis puzzles. “It sounds as though you could use additional assistance. A fighter of some skill.”

“Maybe, but—”

“Someone resistant to scanning magic,” he continues, “who has other talents as well, not to mention powerful allies...”

Geralt doesn’t like where this is headed. Not at all.

“The matter seems settled to me: you'll take Dettlaff with you.”

Geralt’s eyes widen and he snaps his head around to stare at the Nazairi vampire, who comes charging back into view.

 _“No,_ ” Geralt and Dettlaff say together, almost as if speaking with one voice.

He doesn't hear what else Dettlaff says to Regis in his head after that, of course, but the cold fire in his eyes makes it plain to see that he objects at least as fiercely as Geralt does.

 _Absolutely not,_ Geralt snaps _. Out of the question._

“Both of you, out loud, _now_ ,” Regis snarls, his voice ragged, placing two fingers beside his temple. “You're giving me a headache.”

“I will go,” Dettlaff offers immediately, desperately. “The witcher can stay with you. I’ll fly; I can arrive that much more quickly.”

“No,” Geralt dismisses him with a gesture, his hostility back in full force. “That won’t—Vesemir has no idea who you are. What will a veteran witcher _do_ when confronted by an unescorted higher vampire, do you think?”

“ _Listen_ ,” Dettlaff hisses. “Very carefully. If he knows what’s good for him.”

“No,” Geralt says again. “It has to be me.”

“Very well,” Dettlaff agrees. “I’ll stay with Regis, and—”

“Stop it now,” Regis chides them again. “I’m not some _child_ to be looked after. I will be up and around in a matter of weeks.” He touches Geralt’s jaw, physically turning the witcher’s head to acquire his focus.

“Geralt,” his voice is softer now, “This threat you face, your concerns about Ciri… You can’t begin to tell me that you don’t need all the help you can possibly get.”

Geralt knows Regis can feel him sulking, but he says nothing verbally or otherwise, trying very hard to hold fast to that patience Regis advised him about.

“And you,” Regis regards Dettlaff no less seriously. “This is what you _need_. The next step in your evolution. All the things we discussed.”

The background of that remark is lost on Geralt, but it provokes a bestial growl from Dettlaff. Given the self-satisfaction radiating from Regis, though, it seems it’s just for show, the argument won the moment Regis opened his mouth.

At least someone else is equally susceptible to Regis’s influence as he is.

“I couldn’t ask for a better liaison to the human world than Geralt,” Regis tells his companion.

 _What? Regis_ — Geralt starts to object again, but Dettlaff throws a hand up before he can get much further, imploring Regis to stop.

“ _Fine_ ,” he relents, a scowl shadowing his eyes. He turns his dark look to Geralt. “Vizima,” he repeats sullenly. “We’ll depart…”

He trails off, his mouth pressing into a thin line as he apparently takes in the sight of the witcher curled up with his thoughtbound anew.

“...in a few days’ time.”

Without another word, he proceeds to dissolve into a swirl of red mist, disappearing from the cave entirely.

_That was… interesting._

_**See?**_ Regis cuts through the smugness Geralt feels rather incisively. _ **He’s actually very like you—**_

 _Oh, shut up, Regis,_ Geralt snaps, rolling his eyes and pulling away momentarily to remove his sword belt. _You are damned lucky that I adore you as much as I do._

_**I am well aware of it, believe me.** _

An unexpected flicker of sadness emanates from him then, and Geralt watches him with furrowed brow, pressing up to his side again.

_What is it?_

Regis’s eyes are so inky black in his pensiveness, Geralt feels like he could fall into them.

_**I care for Dettlaff, beyond the debt I owe him. But… I know you didn’t choose him. And I’m so sorry for that. If I hadn’t acted so brashly at Stygga, maybe I wouldn’t have needed to—** _

Regis breaks off, the bond silent. Geralt hadn’t even thought of that. He supposes he should have been angry with Regis, maybe still should be.

But after everything they’ve been through, he simply can’t find the emotion; it’s as absent within him as a vampire’s shadow.

_Hey, I’m here now. We both are._

_**You didn’t choose him,**_ Regis reiterates harshly. _**Or me, for that matter.**_

And while that’s true on the surface of it, Geralt disagrees with Regis with every fiber of his being. Destiny is _still_ a bitch, frankly, because the thing of it is: this should have been easy. He _loves_ his thoughtbound—what could be possibly be more fairytale than that?

But they've been pulled apart more than together. He’s had to claw his way back to Regis, fighting death and time and his own mind to return to him.

And if Dettlaff is part of their destiny now, too… well, Geralt’s seen how much good running from it has done before. They’ll adapt.

 _I did_ , Geralt thinks, hoping Regis can feel everything he does. _I did choose you._ _I still do. You chose me, too_.

Regis pulls Geralt to his chest suddenly, embracing him so hard it must hurt, but neither pulls away.

Yeah, Regis can feel it.

Good.

 _Hey. How’d that story end again?_ Geralt asks, smiling. _They were together, right? For good and all?_

A rush of joy, sweeping over him like wind; a memory of wings.

_**For good and all. Yes. Just so.** _

**Author's Note:**

> Some absolutely beautiful art people have created based on this fic:
> 
> [regisislove](https://regisislove.tumblr.com/) made this [incredible but heartrending graphic of Vilgefortz burning Regis alive!](https://regisislove.tumblr.com/post/170088300086/next-quote-is-not-from-the-original-books-but)
> 
> But even if it's sad, it's okay, because [ms-mothball](https://ms-mothball.tumblr.com) did this [gorgeous interpretation of Regis regenerating!](https://ms-mothball.tumblr.com/post/171835560713/regis-regenerating-a-scene-taken-from-unsaid)
> 
> * * *
> 
> THANK YOU FOR READING! I love kudos and comments, always. They make my day. <3


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